Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 55 - Protein Distribution, Golf, Fast Food and What To Do On Rest Days

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

In this episode, Danny sits down and covers a variety of topics. Including:How starting to golf has taught him more about his clients.What is it like to be new at something?How to handle being "bad" at something/initial failings.What fast food options are the "best" if you are in a pinchDo's/Don'tsHow to use rest days to enhance your gainsThe perks of walkingStand-alone mobility work+ MOREOptimizing protein synthesis and muscle gain by spacing out protein (what one new study says)Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Hey, everybody, welcome back in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. I am your host, Danny Matranga, and today we're going to talk a little bit about healthy fast food options, not saying that fast food is inherently healthy or unhealthy, only giving you some tips or at least trying to give you some tips on how to navigate those seemingly inevitable situations where you have very limited choices outside of fast food and you want to limit the damage. I also want to chat a little bit about rest day and what exactly you can do on those rest days to optimize recovery, optimize performance, and enhance longevity. I think that taking days away from resistance training or hard training is really important, but I don't

think you have to be completely sedentary. And I think that talking about the merits of different things you can do on those days will provide you with some insight and maybe even some inspiration as to how to handle them moving forward. And then lastly, I want to talk a little bit about a study on protein distribution and how you can incorporate more balanced protein feedings across the day to optimize your gains and recovery. But before we get into all that, I want to talk to you guys a little bit about golf and how exactly it is I'm learning about my clients and what their experience is like through golfing. So very recently I picked up golf. Golf and I want to say cooking. I read this

somewhere. Golf, cooking, and video game streaming are like three of the most popular searched new things like how to golf, how to cook X recipe, how to start streaming gaming. And the reason gaming has become really popular is because everybody's playing Call of Duty Warzone. Cooking has become increasingly popular, of course, because people have no choice but to eat from home or order food in. So they're doing more cooking. And then golf courses, at least out here in California, were one of the few things that remained open during all of this craziness. Now, I do have an athletic background, but I had never golfed until about two weeks ago. I'd only ever been to a driving range where I swung about probably 50 times, and I played putt golf less than five times in my life. So my experience

with golf was effectively going to place me at the complete novice level. And for those of you who are unaware, an athletic background probably helps you just as much as it hurts you in golf, particularly if you have a baseball background, because you end up swinging the club like a baseball bat. And golf is a skill-based sport. It's all about finesse and skill, which take a long time to acquire through plain old trial and error and getting out there on the course. But if you want to be really good right away, you're going to have a very, very rude awakening, as golf simply takes time to become good at. And I am not very good. I have had a couple of decent putts, a few decent drives, and a few decent shots from the fairway, but the large majority of my shots are

relatively bad, if not very bad. And in all honesty, I've gone out there with the goal of just becoming a competent golfer. Some of my friends are really, really good, but my goal is just to become good enough to play with them. Not even good enough to beat them. There's really no point in me competing with them. I just want to be good enough to play with them. Now, here's what's really interesting. Golf has actually provided me with a rare insight into what it is like for many of my clients or many people out there who are looking to improve their lives with health and fitness. And the parallels are eerily similar. When you first start golfing and when you first start exercising and when you first start observing your nutrition and trying to improve,

you're probably going to suck. You're going to have to undo a lot of the preconceived notions you have about how the game of golf is played. You're going to have to undo and unlearn some preconceived notions about exercise as well as nutrition. It's completely inevitable that you will have struggles. You're gonna hit the ball into the water. You're gonna hit the ball into the wrong fairway. You're gonna hit the ball off the golf course. You're gonna hit the ball straight up

and it's gonna fall behind you. And the same thing could be true of exercise and nutrition. There's a lot of failure baked in as you are learning. However, with golf, it's all about the landscape. Where you're at is going to determine the club you use, the intensity of the swing. Okay, where exactly you want to hit the ball. Maybe you don't want to hit the ball all the way to the green because you know you can't hit it that far. And if you try to, you're going to slice it. So you take a manageable shot to try to get the ball in striking distance of

where you want to go. The same thing's true of nutrition. Sometimes situations aren't perfect. So you do the best with what you have. It might not be ideal, but it ends up being ideal for that situation. You can learn the same thing with regards to fitness. Maybe you don't have the full two hours you'd like to work out. Maybe you're working out from home, but you have to do the best with what you have. Having an arsenal of different clubs gives you the ability to hit the ball in all types of different terrains, all types of different distances, with all types of different swings. And the same can be said for having a large foray of exercises

and understanding different principles of program design and working out. And the same can be said of nutrition, being able to pivot, be flexible, count calories, or just even guesstimate. And I think one of the things that I find so interesting about this is the only reason that I, as a relatively competitive person, I was much more competitive in my early 20s than I am now at 25. I've been doing a lot of reading that's kind of pushed me away from the necessity or the feeling, the requirement to compete, is because I knew that this was going to be a learning experience. It was going to be difficult. It certainly wasn't going to be easy for me to just pick up and be good. And that's something that I've learned from

dealing with my clients over the many years. Even my clients who really have a great handle on their training, we deal with this stuff with regards to nutrition. My clients who have a great handle on their nutrition, sometimes we deal with this stuff with regards to their training. If I'm training somebody who's gen pop and they're just looking to get in shape, I'm usually working on every facet imaginable from lifestyle modification to looking to expand and build some nutritional competency to teaching them the fundamental tenets of working out. However, if every time I hit a bad shot, which I would say is effectively the equivalent of making a mistake with your nutrition and maybe missing a workout, whatever, you can extrapolate that or read into that however you want. If every time I hit a bad shot, I just said, fuck it, I'm giving up on golf, I wouldn't have made it off of the first hole.

I wouldn't even have made it off of the tee box because the first time I ever swung a driver, the ball went straight up and came straight back down one inch in front of the tee. And so this has reconnected me as a coach. And I wasn't super disconnected with it, but it's always humbling to reconnect with it with what it feels like to be an absolute beginner. And I would encourage people who are hobbyists or enthusiasts or coaches, I know many coaches listen to this podcast, to think about where exactly it is people are at when you're communicating with them about fitness. If it's friends, family,

loved ones, clients, meet people where they are at and understand that in order to become effective at this or to become competent, you have to navigate trial and error and you have to navigate frustration. And the same can be said of golf. The good news is I go golfing with my friends, both of whom most recently, all of the friends I golf with are trainers. But most recently I went with two trainers, both of whom I actually hired several years ago when I was working in corporate fitness, and we still maintain a very tight relationship. One of them is a physical therapist now, one of them is training independently. But I taught them a lot of what they know about training, and they are reciprocating by teaching

me the basics of golf. And them not being frustrated in them taking their time with me and teaching me this stuff has really reconnected me with what it feels like to be a beginner and being completely new at something for the first time. So moving on, the first topic of today's episode, as promised, is fast food. Now, in general, when we're talking fast food, I'm going to kind of limit it to restaurants that have a drive-thru, or you can get through the assembly line, quote-unquote, in under 10 minutes. And I want to preface this by first saying, I don't think you should eat fast food really ever if you can avoid it. But I also don't want to be this guy that kind of makes it seem like people just don't

eat fast food or that doesn't really happen because it pops up a lot, especially practically, especially in normal people's lives. For people who are really neurotic about their fitness or they're really, really obsessive and they're really over the top, sometimes fast food's like years in the past. I haven't had fast food in years. But for other people, it's like, hey, man, you know, I was busy and I just decided to go get some McDonald's. And I've heard this stuff all the time.

And so addressing the elephant in the room, which is, hey, fast food is very prevalent in American culture. It's highly accessible and it's really hard to modify people's habits rapidly. I think the best way to look at is to say, hey, this is probably something that's going to happen. How can you navigate it in a way that helps you limit the damage? If you're talking about going in for a cheat meal and you want to get two Big Macs, this is not that discussion. This is saying, hey, you know, your clients, your friends, yourself, whoever it may be, you're going to have access to fast food. And in some instances, it might be the quickest, most effective food for what it is you have to do. Maybe you're on the road, you need to grab something. And so here's

what I like to do. I have narrowed it down actually to my three favorite fast food restaurants as well as everything I like off of those menus. But before we dive into that, let's first talk about what you should focus on. The first thing I try to avoid anytime I'm in a situation where I have to eat fast food is I am not going to drink any calories. I am going to get a water. And the reason this really matters a lot to me is because when you talk about the way most fast food is cooked, a lot of it is fried or cooked in oils that impart additional calories or additional caloric impact to already high calorie foods. So gram per gram, fast food is a lot higher calories because of the oils and the way the oils it's cooked in and the way in which it's prepared than similar dishes

that you would probably prepare at home. And I don't want any extra calories to sneak in from my beverages. So if I really want a soda, that is when I will opt for a diet soda or a carbonated water, or 99% of the time, I'm just going to get a cup of water. The second thing I like to do, instead of buying meals, which always come with, in most cases, high calorie French fries that are very hyper palatable and very low on the satiety level. Oftentimes they come with a dessert and they almost always come with a soft drink. I like to identify higher protein option entrees on the menu and stick with those. So for example, at McDonald's, I would get an egg McMuffin instead of the egg McMuffin meal that comes with like 400 additional calories in the form of super sugary orange juice and a hash brown. I would rather get two egg McMuffins, which is

the same amount of calories, but it has almost 20 more grams of total protein. So in that situation, do I want to be at McDonald's? No. Should you eat there all the time? No. Sometimes are you picking your friends up from the bars and they're hammered and they want to go to McDonald's, so you drive them through and you're like, shit, I'm hungry too. Yes, these things happen. Life happens. So you need to know how to navigate them. So what do I aim for if fast food is the only option or the best option I have? First, the number one place I always try to go if fast food is going to be in the cards is Chipotle. Chipotle is my favorite national chain with regards to quick, healthful, almost exclusively whole foods based eating. You can go to Chipotle and put together a very healthful, nutritious bowl. A lot of times these things are

quite calorically dense, but you can build a bowl, a burrito, a salad, even tacos that are going to be miles ahead of what you're going to get in almost every other fast food restaurant. With regards to Chipotle, I do tend to opt for the bowl. I'm not a huge tortilla person. And I actually like having those elements of Latin cooking absent from the tortilla. It helps me appreciate them more. And I know what you're thinking. Chipotle isn't really Latin cooking. You're totally right, but you get what I'm saying. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode

to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. My bowl is actually quite simple. I get brown rice. I don't get beans, but beans are fine.

Steak, fajitas, guacamole, corn, and lettuce. A lot of whole foods, a lot of fibers, healthy fats. I have found at Chipotle, the steak is almost always the leanest. They ran out carne asada last fall, which was far and away the most protein-packed, low-fat food that they had had on their menu ever. And I was absolutely in love with it because they put cilantro on it too, which I love. However, they got rid of it. And I was absolutely in love with it because they put cilantro on it too, which I love. However, they got rid of it. And as it stands right now, steak and chicken are still your best options. But if you're going to go to Chipotle and you're going to get brown rice, maybe you get beans, black beans, pinto beans, whatever, white rice is fine

too. Protein, maybe you add guacamole so you get some of that healthy fat, and you put some lettuce and fajitas on there. We're talking one to two servings of vegetables easy. You have fiber in the guacamole, fiber in the fajitas, fiber in the beans, fiber in the brown rice, fiber in the lettuce. That's a lot of fiber. That's something a lot of people miss out on. And then you have the protein from the beans, and then you have the protein from whatever protein or meat you choose. And then you have the protein from the beans, and then you have the protein from whatever protein or meat you choose.

And so that's a pretty amazingly flexible spot if you are in a pinch. So if fast food is on the table, maybe you're with a group of people that says, hey, let's just go get fast food. And you're like, oh, man, you know, I don't really want to, but I also don't want to be the guy that goes, oh, no, I brought my cooler with 15 Tupperware in it. I'll eat from here. Not saying that makes you a bad person, just saying it's highly impractical. Chipotle is the way to go. The second option I've had a lot of luck with, and I don't love their politics, and please don't roast me for this, but I do like Chick-fil-A because they have a lot of grilled chicken options. Like I said, I don't endorse their politics. I try not to eat there because of that. But if I am in a pinch or I end up there with friends, maybe it's after 18 holes of golf and that's where they want to go, I'm going to

opt for the grilled options. They have very good salads as well. So if you are in those situations, those are number one and number two. And then my third one, this is a sleeper option, but I absolutely love it. It's Starbucks. And the reason I really like Starbucks is you can get a big, big cup of water for free. You can get coffee for a very, very low calorie impact, coffee and tea, both. And then they have some great high protein options on their menu. The reduced fat turkey bacon sandwich I quite like, and the egg bites I quite like. They also sell fresh pressed juices, although some of them are loaded with sugar, and perfect bars, which are whole foods based bars. So again, if you're in a pinch and you're

like, dude, oh man, I'm just going to run into the gas station and grab a Snickers bar and a Slurpee. Keep your eyes peeled because if you can find some of these places, these are going to be better options. And while we're on the topic of gas stations, like I said, these aren't all perfect, but you can find high protein options in most gas stations. Almost all of them sell Quest Bars now, and almost all of them sell jerky. And even some of them sell fruit, like bananas and oranges. They usually keep them up at the counter, and you can always get a big bottle of water. So whatever situation you are in, look to win that situation. And like I said, it is unfortunate that fast food is as prevalent as it is. And it's certainly a reason that obesity is so prevalent here in the United States. But it's not going

anywhere. And we will, in many cases, have to navigate these situations intelligently. And these are tips and tricks I've shared with my clients that I think will really help you. Now, moving on, let's talk about rest days. So before we talk about rest days, let's create a criteria for reference here. These are going to be the days that you do not go to the gym and train with resistance or train really, really hard using any other modality. So for example, if I trained with weights four days a week and then I sprinted on my quote-unquote rest days, those are not rest days. If I train with weights four days a week and I go on a 10-mile hike after on all my off days, those are not rest days. Rest days are days where activity is going

to be present and you bake them into your programming understanding that, but you deliberately keep that activity at a level that doesn't impair your recovery or your performance from your upcoming training. And so a lot of people ask, is, you know, doing X on my rest day going to inhibit my gains? And the answer is always, it depends on whatever that X is and whatever your fitness level is. So I have a few things that I really recommend for my clients on rest days that I tend to see work for gen pop clients all the way up to high level athletic clients. It's just simple stuff that I think works. I think it promotes recovery and enhances it, in fact. And they're really, really simple. And I also think that for those who are a little bit more neurotic or they really want to do something, they're like, I just can't have a day where I

don't move. And I'm like, oh, yes, that's fine. I've had many clients like that that are like, they refuse not to move. You know, they have to do something active on their rest day. So the first thing you can do is schedule a specific time for yourself to do mobility work. If ever there was something that people tended to skip besides maybe direct core or direct calf training, it's mobility work. And I think mobility work becomes increasingly more important the longer that you have been training. It almost becomes preventative maintenance. It's critically important that you maintain healthy ranges of motion that you can withstand and produce force in. And for most lifters, that's not really too much of a problem.

But for some, maintaining mobility while adding muscle mass or working at a desk can be difficult. And it's not uncommon for people to use phrases like, oh, I'm becoming muscle bound, or the more muscle that I build, the less mobility that I have. And this isn't always the case. In fact, it becomes, in my opinion, resistance training is one of the best mobility practices you can have. But if you can't actively and safely train through a full range of motion, you're going to limit the types of gains you can get. So setting some time aside for 10 to 20 minutes of specific mobility work, not randomized mobility work, mobility work that you know your body needs on the days you don't train, that can be a really smart way to spend your time and make that rest

day feel a bit more productive, feel as though you are still working towards that end goal of whatever your fitness pursuits may be. Another thing you can do on your rest days that I quite like is simply going for a walk. Going for a walk is a great way to increase your step count, which people really like to focus on, especially people who are focused on their fitness. But it's also a great way to enhance creativity, productivity, get vitamin D, all things that we need more of in our lives, or I at least think are helpful for most people. Another thing I like is to play a low-intensity game that challenges you. Golf would be a great example. Something else I like, spike ball, that might be a bit intense

for your non-training days. Same with something like flag football or pickup basketball. But anything that's gamified or gets you back to just simple, playful movement can actually be really, really good if you have a dog. Walking the dog is always an excellent option. And maybe on your rest days, you extend the duration of that stuff. Low-level aerobic work, meaning work that's not, you know, full-on, all-out, but using 50 to 60% of your max heart rate, will enhance recovery by helping circulate blood and all of the different metabolites that get built up in tissue from training back to the heart so that they can be cleansed, purified, oxygenated, all this good stuff that happens from movement. So don't be afraid of a little aerobic work on your non-training days, particularly if it's low impact and low intensity. All of that stuff is still connected to that main goal, that purpose is remaining intact, I found that that's a tremendous way to maintain momentum. I think for a lot of people, there's a fear that if I stop or if I don't train today, I'm going to lose momentum.

some active rest work baked into your routine in the form of mobility work, in the form of going on a walk, walking the dog, playing a game, even all of these is only going to enhance recovery and help maintain momentum. Where things get a little bit sticky is generally when people do absolutely nothing or they do too much. And too much is much more common than absolutely nothing. And this can be as simple as, well, you know, I know I've trained, you know, six days, push, pull legs hella hard, but it won't hurt to go to the gym and just hit arms and calves. It's like, no, it probably won't hurt that bad. But at some point, you are just going to completely burn out on training. And that's not ideal. You have to give your body the opportunity it needs to actually attenuate the gains through proper recovery. All right. So the last thing

I wanted to chat about today is protein distribution. And for many of you at home, you're like, protein distribution, dude, who cares about that? It's actually really important. If the distribution of any one macro had the biggest impact on body composition, performance, and recovery, it's certainly protein. And let me put it as simply as possible. When you eat protein, you elevate a process in the body called muscle protein synthesis. The process of muscle protein synthesis is also elevated by resistance training. You also get a spike in something called mTOR, which is another pathway that promotes muscle growth. And to put it succinctly, every time you

eat a dosage of protein for women that's usually above 20, and for men it's usually above 30 grams, you will optimize your mTOR response in your muscle protein synthesis. And spreading those feedings out across the day can help muscle protein synthesis and mTOR remain elevated more frequently, which should reflect better gains over the course of a training career. So that's the case for distributing protein evenly. However, there is new research on this that I thought I would share. The title of this study is called Evenly Distributed Protein Intake Over 3 Meals Augments Resistance Training Induced Hypertrophy

in Healthy Young Men from Yasuda et al. And this study is from 2020. So let's break down the title. Evenly distributed protein intake over three meals, meaning if you had 120 grams, you do 40 grams a meal, augments resistance exercise-induced muscle hypertrophy in young men. So they're studying young men, they've distributed the protein equally, and they have found that in some way, this impacts muscle growth. And again, the study is from Yasuda et al., 2020. Now, the study looks at two different diets, one with a really high protein intake in the morning and a more even distribution across the day, another with a low protein feeding in the morning, and a more uneven distribution throughout the day. So again, you've got a big feeding in the morning with things even

across the day, or not so big a feeding in the morning with more sporadic stuff across the day, following two groups of people, each doing a 12-week resistance training program. Now, what's cool about this study is both groups actually made some gains in strength and hypertrophy. The group that had a high-protein breakfast had better response to leg curls, leg extensions, arm curls, rows, and chest presses. So the first thing of value we can glean from this is that it certainly appears as though having a larger bowl of serving of protein in the morning and more evenly distributing it across the day might be better for performance. Additionally, if you look at the changes in soft

tissue mass between both groups, the group with a more evenly distributed protein intake across the day performed better. Again, these things aren't surprising. They are just confirming what we already believe to be true or what we expect to be true based on our understanding of physiology. This is what science does. And like I said, both groups made gains in strength and muscle, but the group that had a bigger serving of protein in the morning and a more balanced spread thereafter had greater increases in those five lifts and they built more tissue. So that's kind of important. Another thing that's worth noting is if you look at the variation between growth groups, there was a difference, but it wasn't huge. Protein distribution

overall isn't something that I think is more important than, say, overall calorie intake or, you know, even carbohydrate timing for certain people. But I think it's really important that if spreading your protein into more even feedings helps you perform better and you've really nailed the basics of like, hey, I've definitely hit my macros or I'm hitting my nutrition goals, I'm eating mostly whole foods, this is something you can look to to potentially squeeze a little more gains out. So guys, that is that. Thanks again for listening. And I look forward to catching up with you guys on the next episode. Until then, put this stuff into practice, continue to live a healthy life. Small wins add up over time. Thanks again for tuning in. If you

haven't already, leave me a five-star written rating and review on the iTunes store. And if you enjoyed the episode, tag me and share it to your Instagram story. It helps get it out there and helps more people find the podcast so I can make a bigger difference. Thanks again so much for listening and have a good one.